Using its Engage API, Cognitive Networks creates a Smart Client Technology platform for real-time services on TV and a method for content producers to engage their audiences. It received US patent number US 8769584 B2 that derives data from a smart TV that then allows for the creation of contextually targeted content based on that data.

“Smart TV technology is critical for television manufacturers as an important competitive differentiator, with the unique ability to engage consumers in an interactive ecosystem,” said Cognitive Networks Founder Zeev Neumeier. “Our patented ACR[Automatic Content Recognition] technology enables this by helping to usher in a new class of Smart TV that is able to efficiently provide a set of new features while allowing viewers to engage with both programmed content and other viewers.”

Its Automatic Content Recognition technology allows for real-time contextually related content to be displayed on Smart TVs that is synched to what's being watched on TV. With the Enhanced TV aspect, viewers can then interact with the content. Since Smart TVs are connected to the Internet, this can include: connecting with friends, making purchases, creating reviews and much more.

Russian Law Demands Data on Citizens be Held in Russia

As of September 1, 2016, all data on Russian citizens is to be held on servers that must be located in Russia, Russia Today reports. After that date, services like Google, Facebook and Twitter could be banned if they failed to comply. The future date was chosen to give companies the time needed to construct server farms in the country.

As Ben Sullivan reports in CBRonline, this has massive implications for everyone from Facebook to app builders using APIs:

Russian MP Vadim Dengin told AFP: "Most Russians don't want their data to leave Russia for the United States, where it can be hacked and given to criminals. Our entire lives are stored over there." However, by leveraging foreign web firms into using Russian-housed servers, approved only by the Russian government, the country could very easily gain access to all sorts of information about its citizens, as well as increasing the use of Russian rivals if non-Russian services pull out of the country.

And as reported in Russia Today, "The aim of this law is to create ... [another] quasi-legal pretext to close Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and all other services," Internet expert and blogger Anton Nossik told Reuters. But in a post-Snowden world, where it's clear the American government has been gathering information on people around the globe on a grand scale, a decision to locate in the US isn't a decision to eliminate government surveillance, but to restrict that surveillance to the US government.There's also an interesting implication should more localized rivals bloom in the event of pull outs by the likes of Google and Facebook: what if they become massively popular internationally, just as Facebook and Google are--and start storing large quantities of data on US citizens? Then the roles will be reversed: the Russian government will have access to data on us that the US government, presumably, would not. But regardless of these long term issues, clearly the pressing issue falls on developers: how will we keep segmenting the data so it stays confined inside borders and conforms to local or regional laws?